Hoorah for metal and wood!

[Mad Jim]

Well I fixed my hanwei practical norman sword [well I hope so!].
When I got it [a few months back] I found after a couple o swings that the blade was moving about withen the grip and cross guard! a pain in the arse I tell you as nothing except the pommel was tight, so without taking it all apart, as I didn't know if the peen was recieced or not I just took off the leather and cut the grip off to find the main reason for wobble was that the gap in the grip was too deep and wide, which I sort of had already guessed, so with this I tried my hand to fix it by adding gap fillers or packing and rebinding the grip etc.
Well it was ok but still the ever so slight wobble, so ok give the peen a bash, right that seemed to tighten it a better, good? sort of..

Anyway I got pissed off with it as you all know we want a tight fixure with our hilts. So I got brave and ground off the peen, and took off the grip, I pull the pommel down the tang and found that it had no reciece, good! Had I thougt about this or knew I could have ground off the peen and slipped it all off and set proper packers in the grip and re-peened it, but unfortuiatly I had already destroyed the grip.
Right what to do, now I have a blade a pommel and a cross guard and no grip arghg.....so I thought wait what if I find some wood on the worksite I was working at and try that, good idea but still would I make to halves or one whole piece with a hole through the centre? The hole idea would work though I figured for a tight fit I would prob have to burn the tang through it! So I settled for to halves instead.

I found some 60mmx15mm or so skirting board [pine] and traced the tang with both sides on to the wood, then with a small sharp chisel I carved out a tight channel that fit the tang, after that I cut the two peices to a desired length [I added an extra 2mm to the grip..wooo] and fitted them to the tang and made sure they were tight.

Next I had to glue the to halves together...back to the worksite and used some of the builders strong wood pva glue and clamped the two together.

That night I made sure the wood sandwedge fit all good and it did. Next was to shape the grip as it was now a rectangle. I marked out the grip with a taper to the pommel and sawed off the excess sides, from there I took the small chiesel and carved away at it forming a round tapering grip, also I was checking every so often that it was a good size and no to fat, with some sanding and more charving I got it good and right.
Next step I bound on leather thong to check for length...you need roughly 2.5m of 5mm width for a 100mm in length grip...cut the length and fix the start of the thong under the crossguard to secure it, also I pinned it there in place as well.
With wood/leather glue I bound and glued the thong on and force on the cross and pommel to help hold it all.

Next when that had fully cured, I set to fixing it all together.
I took to the blade where it turns to tang and ground off a couple of mm of the ricaso, fitted the hilt componants to make sure I had enough tang to peen. From here I got a wood block and put it over the tang and hilt and gave it a could wack to force every thing down tightly.

Then I took to it with a 16 ounce ball peen hammer {maybe it was to light? I'm unsure worked though} I cold peened the tang over the pommel and now it all feels tight and good...next test is to see if it holds up ok in combat!....hoorah next I have to cover my hanwei plastic scabbard in leather and attempt to make a period style belt fitting!.....

cheers for reading...Jim.

[Sir_Thundar]

hey ive got one of thoese norman swords to what are the odds that i will have the same issue ?

[Mad Jim]

Don't know, I could have got a lemon, but on saying that the gap either side of the blade when its sitting within the crossguard is quite wide, though really it was more the fact that the grip was tight from pommel to cross but was not tight with the tang..
Should yours have the same drama you could give the peen a wack, it may fix it right up, that is if your sword has a wobble! Still now mine feels rather comfatble..

[Bogue]

And Mad Jim did state, in his well explained renovations, that:-

[Mad Jim]

Yea I was aware of where the ricaso meets the tang in that it should have a round it and not a straight out 90 degrees [as I read was the prob with those first batch of tinker longswords!]. The cross guard of the norman practical has rounds init so it sits snug with the blade, also the blade had rounding at the ricaso tang area so I just carried it on when I ground out a couple o mm's and made sure the cross sat upon it secure, and sure enough it worked out all good..plus I added glue to the hilt section before I peen it together.
Although with the peen I had read that it was a good idea to have about a third of the thickness of the tang protruding, and I think I had it just right as it all went ok..